nipponDAZE

Postmark: Beppu

[...]Living here is strange in ways I had not imagined. It’s not the differences in clothing, food, housing, or custom that bothers me. I’d read enough about them to be prepared–and some I prefer to the American way of doing things. Plus, I’m used to not having a dishwasher, air conditioner, television, couch, or a washer/dryer. I’m used to spending a lot of time at home alone, reading or writing or puttering around the house.

The difference is that if I started getting stir crazy in Austin, I’d hop in my car and drive. I might go up to the Arboretum to get ice cream at Amy’s and visit my cows, or go see a movie. Or I’d drive down to Town Lake and watch the bats. I miss my car and I miss movies! I miss reading reviews about movies. I wonder if it’s possible to get a subscription to the Chronicle delivered in Beppu.

I don’t know if it’s like this elsewhere in Japan but living in Kamegawa is like living in a village. (Kamegawa is our little suburb north of Beppu. We live in Kamegawa-chuo-machi [亀川中央町] literally turtle-river-center-of-town, or simply, central Kamegawa.) This is very much a neighborhood in the way that has vanished in the U.S. Most shopkeepers have their houses above their shops. There are green grocers, fish markets, bakeries, and cake shops. Amid these are the rice shops, tea shops, barbershops, and public baths. All the shopkeepers are nice to us. I enjoy going marketing although it takes about an hour out of every day.

[...] One of the Japanese teacher of English, Tonai-sensei, and his wife just took me shopping at the discount store [Kotobukiya] downtown. “Welcome, K-Mart shoppers!” It’s curiously the same although it remains distinctly Japanese in its modernized versions of traditional Japanese goods. I never thought I’d be happy to see the inside of a K-Mart lookalike, but hey–I’m adaptable. Madonna was playing over the store PA and she sounded great!

Housework is very labor-intensive. I go marketing about every day, as does everyone else. One reason it to buy the freshest possible food. (There are almost no frozen foods in our market.) The other is because I can’t carry more than a day’s worth of groceries the 10-block walk home. On Sundays I clean house. This involves chiefly washing the futon covers and airing out the futons. Neguro-san (my neighbor/dorm housemother) lent me a vacumn and it is a godsend for vacumning up the spiders and dust.